The rail workers union the RMT announced that members working as security staff for the rail service between London, Paris, and the Low Countries, Eurostar will strike for four days before Christmas – December 16 and 18 (to affect the last weekend before the festive holiday), and December 22 and 23.
The RMT said that the workers refused a below inflation pay offer and 81 per cent voted to strike. The security staff at the St Pancras International station are under contract from the facilities management plc Mitie. The union said that over 100 staff are expected to take part.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Eurostar security staff are essential to the running of Eurostar, and it is disgraceful they are not being paid a decent wage. They work long unsocial hours and a multimillion-pound company like Mitie can easily afford to pay them decently for the essential work they do.
“We do not want to disrupt people’s travel plans, but our members need a pay rise, and this is the only way management will listen. I urge Mitie and Eurostar to come to a negotiated settlement with RMT as soon as possible.”
Contract cleaning staff working for FM firms such as Churchill, Atalian Servest and Mitie, including at St Pancras (pictured), have already been striking and on picket lines for some months. Likewise the RMT and other rail unions Aslef and TSSA have been striking in a dispute over pay; and against proposed management changes to working conditions. The RMT has announced national strike action by cleaners for the first time on December 22 and 23, and 31.
In a recent letter to Mick Lynch, Transport Secretary Mark Harper advocated modernising of working practices for a ‘sustainable railway’, to ‘deliver the savings that lower post-covid passenger numbers require, restore financial sustainability and not place an unfair burden on taxpayers’.
